


Hurry up and Wait

by CypressSunn



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angry Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Smut, i don't know how to categorize that, kind of?, look its some emotionally fraught sexytimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-20 21:40:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21063617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn
Summary: “I mean it, Eddie,” Buck rounds back, swinging the door open for him. Outside the sun has left the horizon behind. There is a trail of bruise colored hues between the neighboring building complexes and utility poles and empty streets. “The lawyer said we’re not supposed to to be around each other, or talk to each other—”Eddie drags in a breath. It grates against his insides, against his willpower not to exhale it back out and everything on his mind along with it. Eddie strides over into his space.“So let's not talk.”





	Hurry up and Wait

**DISPATCHER:** 9-1-1 WHAT’S YOUR EMERGENCY?

**CALLER:** [WHISPERING] THERE’S SOMEONE IN MY HOUSE.

**DISPATCHER:** SIR, WHAT IS YOUR LOCATION? ARE YOU SAFE?

**CALLER:** I’M IN THE BATHROOM. I CAN’T SEE THEM BUT I CAN HEAR THEM.

**DISPATCHER:** IS THERE ANY CHANCE IT COULD BE A FAMILY MEMBER HOME EARLY?

**CALLER:** NO, I LIVE ALONE. [PROLONGED PAUSE] NO ONE SHOULD BE HERE.

**DISPATCHER: **I HAVE YOUR ADDRESS REGISTERED TO YOUR FILE, MISTER BUCKLEY. WE CAN DISPATCH SOMEONE IMMEDIATELY.

**CALLER:** NO, I’VE GOT A BASEBALL BAT. JUST THOUGHT I’D CALL TO COVER ALL MY BASES, SO TO SPEAK.

**DISPATCHER: **SIR, I REALLY ADVISE AGAINST THAT.

**CALLER:** [THE SOUND OF METAL DOOR HINGES, FOOT STEPS] … SHIT.

**DISPATCHER:** MISTER BUCKLEY? WHAT’S HAPPENED? ARE YOU ALRIGHT?

**CALLER:** YOU CAN CANCEL EMERGENCY SERVICES. WE’RE ALL GOOD HERE.

**DISPATCHER: **SIR, ARE YOU SURE? WAS IT FAMILY? A FRIEND?

**CALLER: **[SIGHS] … YEAH. SOMETHING LIKE THAT. 

** _[CALL DISCONNECTED]_ **

* * *

Eddie let himself in. 

It’s the sort of thing he can freely do since he still has a key; the same spare that Buck had the realtor make to match his own. It's not something Buck would have counted on him doing, not since world spread of his suit against the city, against the department. He expected irate calls, angry messages, not a house-call. But there Eddie was, leaning against the armrest of the secondhand sofa Buck had strong-armed him and Chimney into helping him move. Out of uniform, arms crossed, hair combed back, boots off and lined neatly by the door.

He’s just gotten off a shift. Buck can tell by the way his starched shirt sticks to his chest, evidence of a recent shower rinsing off a hard day’s work. Buck’s ribs squeeze tight with a flush of envy. He tries to breathe through it, but it bleeds into his voice anyway.

“You're not supposed to be here,” Buck says, mouth drying.

Eddie riles out a sharp chuckle. “It’s good to see you too, buddy.”

Buck knows he’s doing this wrong, moving past him to the door as if Eddie needed directions for the way out. As if he hadn’t been here in Buck’s loft half a hundred times before or wasn’t intimately acquainted with every part of it. But if there’s a right way to kick out the person he’d been missing the most, Buck’s not sure what it is.

“I mean it, Eddie,” Buck rounds back, swinging the door open for him. Outside the sun has left the horizon behind. There is a trail of bruise colored hues between the neighboring building complexes and utility poles and empty streets. “The lawyer said we’re not supposed to to be around each other, or talk to each other—”

Eddie drags in a breath. It grates against his insides, against his willpower not to exhale it back out and everything on his mind along with it. Eddie strides over into his space.

“So let's not talk.”

The pointed intent is enough to startle Buck. He doesn’t move a millimeter as Eddie manhandles him, eyes hard, yanking at Buck by the collar. Naturally, naturally, he falls right into the centered gravity of Eddie’s grasp and lets himself be kissed. 

The door slams shut behind him when Buck finds himself pressed against it. Fumbling fingers manage to twist the deadbolt locked before tangling into the collar of Eddie’s shirt. It’s his last coherent thought before his mind goes staticky and needy. Eddie’s sleek, hot everything against him. Hands and mouth pulling and reaching, Buck clutching at Eddie’s shoulders. Because he’s missed this. More than that, he’s needed this. The clarity that Eddie burns through him. The weight of it all that Eddie shoulders for him. Eddie’s frame more solid than the doorway and Buck has no question as to which is really holding him up when his knees go weak.

Buck hisses into Eddie’s ear when his belt comes undone. Eddie’s hand is down his pants that are hanging around his hips. He’s grasped with a firm, familiar touch but stroked a little too fast. There’s an edge to how Eddie handles him, unspoken reproach wringing out of his wrist.

“Eddie, I—” Buck pants. But his head rolls back before he can say what he means, whatever it is. _ Eddie, I need more. Eddie, I want it to feel like before. Eddie, I am so fucking sorry. Eddie, I _ **_had_ ** _ to do it— _

“Thought we said no talking?” Eddie growls lowly. His teeth graze along Buck’s collarbone while his fingers press into his hips. “Otherwise, don’t I have to leave?”

Buck shakes his head. Twisting in Eddie’s grip, Buck scrambles— Not to get away, not to stop, but to draw the other man deeper and closer and not let him change his mind.

But after one more kiss, Eddie leans back anyway. Buck feels helpless as he watches him saunter off. Eddie stops short of the staircase. Brows raised asking the question without words: _ you coming? _

They make it up the stairs, nearly stumbling down. They had done just that once before on an early morning after one of Eddie’s deadman’s shifts. Collapsing into the steps, hanging onto the rail and each other. Not quite sitting and not quite laying, Buck had sunk down and clambered on top of Eddie. He’d blown him right then and there, half on Eddie’s dare and half on desperation.

On the mezzanine floor, Eddie drags Buck to the foot of his bed. There he dispatches the remainder of Buck’s clothes to get to the skin underneath. Buck tries to help Eddie undress but finds his hands rebuffed when they tug on his button-down. Eddie remains silent in the face of Buck’s questioning eyes and his hurt. Just pushes him back until his knees hit the bed. Buck ducks down to sit, watching Eddie peel off his jeans, barely looking at Buck.

Normally, Eddie would let Buck close. Let him act put all his devotion. But now—

Scattered across their heap of clothing, Buck hears Eddie’s key-chain rattle and chink to the carpet. Somewhere on the silver ring is the key Buck gave him. The key was more intended for nights like this than whatever they told themselves aloud. More than just a precaution Eddie for worst-possible scenario and/or heroics that ended in Buck never making it home.

It had been about being together, not having to hide.

Not too long ago, the bleakest future Buck could have imagined was one where Eddie had to use that key; collapsing stairwells, smoke inhalation, compromised aeriel climbs, the last call Buck ever geared up for. Now, Buck lay awake at night fixating on court rulings and shady lawyer fees. On whether or not there was a next call. If his squad would forgive. If Eddie would ever look at him or touch him the same.

In bed, Eddie turns Buck over until he’s lying prone against the mattress. If it’s so they don't have to look at each other, or so Eddie can better prepare him, Buck can’t tell.

It's not that they haven't done this before. Countless times, Eddie's spent nights fucking him just like this, well into the morning. Bucks face cushioned against a pillow, his screams plastered to the cotton, and Eddie's faceless heated whispers in his ear. 

It had never felt so impersonal then.

Eddie kisses the back of Buck’s neck, bites his shoulder. Buck shivers but it doesn't feel good.

He can't do this. Not like this.

“Eddie,” Buck begs, hand reaching back, “Eddie, stop.”

A gasp cuts through the air and Eddie pulls away again. Buck is halfway up the headboard, holding against it to get his bearings.

As silent as before, Eddie looks him up and down. Maybe he sees how wrecked Buck feels. How conflicted and lonely and hurt and driftless. But the sight of it leaves Eddie visibly reeling. He bites his lip and looks at his hands. Like he doesn't know what he's doing or why or how he could live with himself.

It’s not often that Buck has seen Eddie spiral, but he recognizes the hurt. Buck wraps his arms around him and whispers.

“I don't want you to go,” Buck promises him. “And I don't think you want me to kick you out.”

Eddie shakes his head. “A lot of things I don't want you to do,” Eddie says numbly. “Did it— Did it ever occur to you that when this is all over, that none of us are getting what we want?”

“Eddie, that’s not what I—” Buck’s head swims in all his intentions, all his pain. He’s not sure which way is up or which way leads out. “I had to do it.”

“The only thing you had to do was come to me! Why didn’t you just—” Eddie cuts off his own shouting. He wipes at his eyes and Buck acts like he doesn’t see. The moment hangs over them; it hurts like nothing else to be so close with this distance between them. But Eddie leans into Buck's touch this time when he rights their bodies together. Let's Buck smooth his hands down his back and kiss the stubble along his jaw. “Let's go back to not talking, okay?” Eddie asks, unsure for a second.

Buck nods.

And this time when Eddie kisses him, there is one less wall between them. Eddie feels more like Eddie, Buck feels almost like himself, and they settle against each other, grinding hot and heavy. Buck is breathing into Eddie’s mouth and Eddie accepts the invitation to suck his tongue into his mouth. Buck all but melts at the slide of his cock against Eddies, swallowing his words and the pleas try to beg their way up his throat.

Somehow Eddie is upright in bed even with Buck tangled around him. Eddie manages to scoot back, leaning against the headboard, guiding and wrangling a vibrating Buck into his lap there. At first, Buck is mewling and indignant at Eddie moving them away from their position and their perfect, captured friction. It takes a moment for his sex-soaked brain to realize he can leverage the headboard and Eddie and ride him. He can hold himself and everything else against Eddie, hard and fast and greedy. Because Eddie can take it. Eddie is solid, Eddie is steel, Eddie is bedrock. And Buck’s not sure how he forgot that. How he let the knowledge slip until it felt so far away from him that he couldn’t trust it. But he trusts it now, taking Eddie deeper and harder until everything whites out and even Eddie forgets their ban on talking, shooting off rapid-fire Spanish as he fills Buck again and again.

* * *

When it's over, Buck’s sweat sticks to Eddie’s between their foreheads pressed together. They’re a mess. A snarl of sheets and bound up limbs. One of them will have to make the first move, sooner or later. Say something, do something. Buck knows it should be on him. That it’s on him for all he put Eddie through. 

But there’s a sharp nagging inside Buck that reminds him how fondly Eddie looked at Bosko. The woman bunking in his fire station with her gear in his locker. 

Eddie rolls over to stare at the ceiling. “Thanks for inviting me in,” Eddie starts, nonchalance laid thin over all his stewing emotions. “And thanks for, you know, coming to me before you followed through with any half-cocked, life-ruining ideas.”

Buck rubs his head to Eddie’s shoulder, groans.

“Because those are the kinds of things you run by your best friend, your partner, instead of letting him find out from idle locker room gossip.”

“There wasn’t time to tell you—”

“I _ laughed _in John’s face when he told me,” Eddie spits out the word ‘laugh’ like he resents how funny it really wasn’t in the end. “Told him— Said there was no way in hell our Buck would ever bring that kind of grief to our station’s front door. He wouldn’t do that to family,” Eddie scraps his nails through his hair, miserably. “Cap had to let me read the papers you served him before I even let myself believe it.”

“Eddie I’m sorry.”

Eddie shakes his head. _“_ _ Si te arrepientes de algo, te detendrás .” _

“I don’t know what that means,” Buck sits up, frustrated. “And you don’t know what this has been like. Since the surgeries, since the tsunami. I’m trying to get my life back!" Buck breathes in hard. "All of it… you included.”

With a soft look, Eddie takes Buck’s hands in his. He kisses both his palms gently. Buck realizes all of a sudden that there are scrapes along Eddie’s knuckles. Scrapes he had not noticed before. It's a small detail, nothing Eddie would ever mention or complain about. But they provoke something in Buck. A worry that these are the kind of cuts that standard gear and gloves should have prevented. What kind of calls had Eddie been on without him? Buck doesn’t ask, but he wonders if Bosko is at least doing her job; watching his back, making sure he’s safe, looking out for his man in the line of duty.

Anxiety churns in his gut but Buck doesn’t regret anything. He can't let himself. Not if it brings him back to where he should be. 

“If you had told me beforehand,” Eddie says, kinder but still bitter, “do you know what I would have said?”

Buck huffs. “Yeah, I know. You would have told me to back off. Sit on my hands and take my medicine.”

“I would have told you to hurry up and wait.”

“...what?” Buck puzzles.

“It’s something we say in the army,” Eddie reminisces. “Hurry up, do your part, finish your task. Move, move, move onto the next thing. And when it's done, when it's time to watch for the trap to spring or the command to come calling, you hunker down, buckle in, and you wait. You wait for as long as it takes. You wait longer than seems humanly possible. But you wait because it’s the job, because it's the only thing to do without making things worse. Or throwing away everything you’ve worked for because you got trigger happy.”

Buck squeezes his eyes shut. There's a logic he can’t deny in Eddie’s rebuke. But he isn’t sure he would have let it the night when he filed against the city.

Eddie seems to know it, too. “But none of that matters now, does it?”

“I know what I’m doing, Eddie. I know what I’m fighting for.”

Eddie rolls over, slinks out of bed. “I really hope so, Evan,” he whispers over his shoulder. “I really do.”

Picking through their things, Eddie pulls on his clothes. The lights are off and the light of the sunset has long passed. Only the orange tint of the streetlight filters through the window. Just the same, even from the bed Buck can tell that it's his black undershirt Eddie slips on instead of his own. Buck doesn’t say anything. Quietly glad about it. Thinks that the dry, woodsy rich scent of Eddie’s cologne will still linger for later, when Buck is missing him again.

The last thing Eddie finds is his key-chain. He stuffs it in his back pocket, before taking it out again a moment later. The silver and bronzed keys slide along the ring, spreading out in a metallic bloom. As if by memory, Eddie picks one out, holding it up.

Buck knows it's the key to his place. To the front door that he had tried to push Eddie could remove it, pull it from the bunch and leave it on the dresser drawer. Buck sees the thought passing over his eyes more than once.

“I’m holding onto this. For when we’re partners again.”

Eddie doesn’t really believe it. Buck can taste as much when he leans down to kiss him goodbye. But it doesn’t stop Buck from taking the admission as a win. “Tell Bosco not to get too comfortable.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. 

“Whatever you say, Buck,” he chuckles on his way down the stairs. “Whatever you say.” 

Buck strains his ears to follow Eddie’s silent footfalls down the steps and across the loft. Holds his breath until Eddie’s opened the door and stepped out into the city, locking the door behind him.

_ **fin.** _

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a bit of a rush job and I'm sure it shows. It's been proofread all of once. Forgive me. The boys just make me want to write and this story line is just perfect for shippy drama :D
> 
> Inspired by prompt #76: Key.  
***  
tumblr: cypresssunn.tumblr.com


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